The Armed Garden, and Other Stories
by David B
translated by Kim Thompson
Fantagraphics
2006, reprinted 2011
There's a rare pleasure in wandering stacks of bookshelves, picking out a volume because it somehow catches your eye, discovering that you've never heard of this title or author before, flipping through, and feeling that spark of interest and curiosity that makes you want to take it home. Librarians call this 'serendipitous discovery,' and in this age that overflows with reviews, recommendations, suggestions, referrals, coming soons, see alsos, and curated lists, it's not how I, or most people, find most of the books they read, but it's how I found David B's The Armed Garden, and Other Stories, in a used bookstore in Portland, tucked between trade paperbacks of Aquaman and The Avengers.
Rare too is the pleasure of reading a book you found this way, discovering something unlike what you usually read, maybe unlike anything you've ever read before, discovering something of quality, something you really enjoy, and that you found by happenstance, that you wouldn't have found any other way. That sort of thing doesn't happen every day. You want to savor it when it does. The Armed Garden is something special, and I'm glad I picked it out.
This is a graphic novel, a collection of three short stories, fantasy stories set amid the historic past. All three are medieval. Not in the sense of high fantasy, with princesses and knights. There are rulers, yes, and soldiers, but also fervent religious faith, competing heresies, and deeply weird magic that operates on a kind of fairy tale logic, outside of human control. These stories resemble tales from the Bible, or folk tales, stories that people might've shared alongside gossip of a neighbor's house-sized vegetables, or the miraculous birth of rabbits to a virgin one village over.
In the first story, 'The Veiled Prophet,' the wind blows a piece of cloth onto the face of a fabric merchant. It gets stuck there, allowing him to assume the forms of Jesus, Adam, Moses, but anyone who sees his true face dies. He amasses an army of followers, and the attention of the caliph, who sends his own army.
In the title story, 'The Armed Garden,' a crusader receives a vision that compels him to strip naked and find a new Eden. Many people join him, in his nudity, and his earthly paradise, including wild animals, and even walking trees, all carrying swords. Other crusaders come to destroy the garden, though its leader has become a star.
In the last story, 'The Drum That Fell in Love,' a mercenary captain is killed in battle, and his company has him, skinned, tanned to leather, and stretched to become a drum skin. When the drum is played, he returns as a ghost. The mercenaries carry the drum into battle, but eventually they're defeated, and the drummer, who's fallen in love with the ghost, runs off with the drum. The girl and the drum have more adventures together, including finding the physical location of heaven.
Each story has a weird, dream-like quality to it. There's none of the systematic, almost science-like logic that many contemporary fantasy stories apply to their magic. This is like something older, something pre-modern. David B's art is mostly black and white, with a bit of sepia shading. There's a very good match between the feel of the art and the tone of the stories.
Rare too is the pleasure of reading a book you found this way, discovering something unlike what you usually read, maybe unlike anything you've ever read before, discovering something of quality, something you really enjoy, and that you found by happenstance, that you wouldn't have found any other way. That sort of thing doesn't happen every day. You want to savor it when it does. The Armed Garden is something special, and I'm glad I picked it out.
This is a graphic novel, a collection of three short stories, fantasy stories set amid the historic past. All three are medieval. Not in the sense of high fantasy, with princesses and knights. There are rulers, yes, and soldiers, but also fervent religious faith, competing heresies, and deeply weird magic that operates on a kind of fairy tale logic, outside of human control. These stories resemble tales from the Bible, or folk tales, stories that people might've shared alongside gossip of a neighbor's house-sized vegetables, or the miraculous birth of rabbits to a virgin one village over.
In the first story, 'The Veiled Prophet,' the wind blows a piece of cloth onto the face of a fabric merchant. It gets stuck there, allowing him to assume the forms of Jesus, Adam, Moses, but anyone who sees his true face dies. He amasses an army of followers, and the attention of the caliph, who sends his own army.
In the title story, 'The Armed Garden,' a crusader receives a vision that compels him to strip naked and find a new Eden. Many people join him, in his nudity, and his earthly paradise, including wild animals, and even walking trees, all carrying swords. Other crusaders come to destroy the garden, though its leader has become a star.
In the last story, 'The Drum That Fell in Love,' a mercenary captain is killed in battle, and his company has him, skinned, tanned to leather, and stretched to become a drum skin. When the drum is played, he returns as a ghost. The mercenaries carry the drum into battle, but eventually they're defeated, and the drummer, who's fallen in love with the ghost, runs off with the drum. The girl and the drum have more adventures together, including finding the physical location of heaven.
Each story has a weird, dream-like quality to it. There's none of the systematic, almost science-like logic that many contemporary fantasy stories apply to their magic. This is like something older, something pre-modern. David B's art is mostly black and white, with a bit of sepia shading. There's a very good match between the feel of the art and the tone of the stories.
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